"Rusty Ride" is an abandoned 2D side scrolling "rolling truck physics" game based off common Unity tutorials for making such games, but the developer at least tried to do something with it instead of just copy + pasting the template. Unfortunately they gave up and abandoned the game in a completely unfinished state... and that's ok too, except the left it up on Steam deliberately to pollute the place with unfinished garbage.
Yes, despite not being in Early Access, it's obvious this is an incomplete product. Developers have an obligation to deliver complete, not partially done products to gamers, that shouldn't be controversial. Whatever the excuses may be, it does no service to gamers for incomplete products polluting Steam like this. It makes it harder for gamers to find complete games, and it makes it harder for ethical developers who do the right thing to find their audience.
The game features really lacklustre 2D visuals (does the developer not know 3D graphics became mainstream in the mid-1990s?). Gamers don't spend thousands of dollars on gaming rigs and the latest 3D graphics cards to play 2D games. Even mobile phones and game consoles can do 3D graphics now. There's no excuse.
Let's talk about price and the value this represents for us gamers.
Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 130 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB shows this peaked at [b]only 2 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away.
Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it?
Give this one a miss. Although it's free, your time and storage are valuable resources, and the market is filled with superior options.
[quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Response![/url][/quote]The developer has weighed in to inform everyone they didn't read the [url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Usage Rules[/url] for Steam "partners", or they deliberately ignored the part where Valve says:
[quote]Though it may be tempting, not every review needs to be responded to. A developer response will frequently draw more attention than the original statement, potentially turning a small issue into a much larger community discussion. It's also not a good idea to use this feature to refute customer opinions. Your direct attention can be seen as validation or a defensive attempt to silence your customers.[/quote]
The first thing the developer wants everyone to know is that they are "The Main Character". You, as a gamer, don't matter. They breach Valve guidelines for developers just to complain about a fully accurate and informative review (with facts their ego doesn't like). It's evident from their attitude that they never created this product with gamers in mind. They did so to stroke their own ego. When developers, especially failed ones who would never be able to get a professional job in the industry, put themselves before gamers, we end up with garbage products like this. That explains how this trash ended up on Steam, but it doesn't excuse it. At least we finally got to meet The Main Character, and nobody else matters.
The developer claims this is their first time trying to make a game. If I went to a restaurant, got sick from eating bad food, and got told "The chef is new and has never cooked food before", would that make it okay? No, it wouldn't. The developer supplied a very valid reason why this should never have been put up for sale on Steam in the first place.
The developer admits they didn't hire a team of talented staff to produce the game and tried to do the whole thing on their own, instead. This is a lot like boarding an airplane, and halfway through the flight, having the pilot come out and serve peanuts. It's going to end in disaster. It requires a team of competent people to do a complex job properly, and that's not what has happened here... another explanation for the poor quality of this game.
The developer response is an arrogant and insulting one.
The developer brazenly admits the product is of inferior quality... [i]but they published it anyway.[/i]
The developer brazenly admits this is defective and while it might be fixed... [i]they chose not to do this and also chose not to remove it from Steam.[/i]
This pollution, from a product the developer knows is inferior and inadequate (and this is borne out by the facts... SteamDB doesn't lie, a peak player count of 2 people is abject failure and rejection), is absolutely harmful.
But the developer persists on keeping this garbage published on Steam... not because it's good for gamers, it's not, it's pollution, but to make him feel good about himself. Because he's the main character.
Early Access rules don't matter, because he's more important.
Valve guidelines for developers don't matter, because he's more important.
We can tell everything we need to know about why this product from a failed developer is so bad... but it excuses none of it.
In fact, the developer DELIBERATELY abuses Steam Early Access by working on other projects instead of this one. Totally unacceptable.
Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered. I cannot recommend this game to anyone.
